Stories That Are Bad

Disclaimer: This story is an outright lie. Any similarity between its author and someone who tells the truth is a mistake.


I was busily minding my own business at the sub shop today when I was rudely interrupted by a thought. I was going to tell you what it was, but I seem to have forgotten it. Instead, I’m just going to complain about the goings-on around me during the lunch break I used to go to the sub shop.

The guy sitting to my right was one of those people who looks like they might’ve had a comb-over if they had any hair, and his glasses were pushed so far up his nose that his eyeballs rubbed against the thick lenses which were crammed ungracefully into their frames. He turned to me as if to say something, and then he did.

“I was trying to find my wallet earlier today, and wouldn’t you just know it… it was in the last place I looked. Doesn’t that figure?”
I responded with a less-than-tactful but more-than-boring retort: “You, sir, are an imbecile. Things will ALWAYS be in the last place you look. If they weren’t, that would mean that you kept looking after you’d already found them. That, incidentally, would make you just as stupid as the statement you just made lets me know that you are.”

Unfortunately, Anti-combover Glassesman didn’t have time to be offended because his lunch break had ended, and he wasn’t allowed to have emotions while on duty. Apparently he was a lawyer.

Then I turned to find a very old man who looked much like a relative of Confucius sitting on my left.

“How did you get there?” I asked, half-expecting some very philosophical answer.
“I opened the door, walked over here, and sat down.”
“I see. A walker-sitter, are you? I’ll teach you a thing or four about walking and sitting.”

This, of course, sparked a very intense competition between the old man and myself involving walking around and sitting down a lot. Turns out I’m better at walking, but the old man was a far better sitter.

Then the Confucius impersonator threw a grape at me, and without bothering to accompany his fruity assault with a witty, insightful quote, left the building.

My inner monologue at this point went something like this: “Y’know. I really can’t stand people who think they can sit around being better at sitting than me. How dare he grape me in the face? I’m going to train my ability to sit by watching TV twice as much next week. Then I’ll show him.”

Unfortunately, I hadn’t turned off my outer monologue while thinking this, and it seems I’d been ranting about how ugly some woman’s baby was, and loud enough that she could hear me from across the restaurant, so I was snapped harshly back into reality by a slap to the face with a pancake.

“Where did you get a pancake in a sub shop?” I asked her, incredulous.
“Some old chinese-looking man gave it to me. He said it would come in handy, but be my downfall. I suppose it did come in handy. I can’t see any problems that slapping you caused me, though… so I suppose he was wrong.” Then she took a bite of the pancake and started choking on it.

Afraid to think what “downfall” might have meant, I hurried out of the sub shop and ran smack into a slab of concrete that someone had put right outside the door and painted to look like what was behind it.

And that, my friends, is how I came up with the word “avbhoeilnh,” with a little help from randomly mashing my fingers on the keyboard. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get something to eat. Probably that grape that’s still stuck in my collar. What? You won’t excuse me?

…well, I don’t care. I’m going to excuse myself and leave now.

And now I’m back. Seems like I was only gone moments to you, but in reality, I was gone less than moments. Only one moment passed while I was away. Seriously, though. I now take my leave. Maybe I’ll give it back later.